April 1999: The Atlantic Brigade places itself in the service of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Agron, Mehmet and Ylli Bytyqi become members of the Atlantic Brigade, departing with nearly four hundred other U.S. residents for Kosovo. The Bytyqi Brothers travel through Albania to Kosovo on their U.S. passports.

9 June 1999: NATO and FRY officials sign a Military Technical Agreement (known as the Kumanovo Agreement) to govern the withdrawal of FRY forces.

August-October 1999: Natasa Kandicand the Humanitarian Law Center make repeated inquiries regarding the Bytyqis’ whereabouts and status. They receive only the records of their release from the Prokuplje prison. Sometime later, the Bytyqi’s Brothers’ mother Bahrije and brother Fatose go to the Prokuplje prison to search for information. They learn only that the brothers were taken away by plainclothes officers in a white car.

April 2002: Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the alleged originator of the orders and former Minister of Interior, commits suicide on the steps of the Serbian Parliament after Parliament votes to extradite him to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

23 August 2006:The Serbian War Crimes Chamber indicts Sreten Popovic and Milos Stojanovic, the two OPG officers who helped transfer the Bytyqis from Prokuplje to Petrovo Selo. It charges the two with having abetted the brothers’ deaths and denied the brothers their basic human rights.

December 2006: Serbian prosecutors subpoena Goran Radosavljevic for questioning and testimony in their investigation of the Bytyqi case. War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic later tells U.S. embassy officials that the prosecutor in the case suspects that Radosavljevic was acquainted with the case, since Radosavljevic commanded the Petrovo Selo training facility and was in constant communication with Vlastimir Dordevic. Vukcevic also suggests that Radosavljevic was actively instructing and intimidating witnesses in the case.

7 July 2008: A new coalition led by the DS is formed, with Milosevic’s former party, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), as the junior partner. SPS chief, Ivica Dacic, assuming the roles of Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister.

2009: Radosavljevic joins the SNS party, serving as an informal advisor to party chief Nikolic on security issues.

11 June 2009: Natasa Kandic, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade and an expert witness in the trials of Popovic and Stojanovic, resigns from the trials, stating that: “A total of 96 witnesses were heard all of whom protected the accused, i.e. their superior commanders, in their testimonies…. The fact that Goran Radosavljevic Guri freely returned to Serbia to be questioned as a witness in the main hearing leads to the conclusion that he was in contact with state authorities and that he has been promised that he will not be found responsible for this crime.”

22 September 2009: The trial court issues its judgment, acquitting Popovic and Stojanovic. In 2010, an appeals court grants a retrial.

23 February 2011:Vlastimir Dordevic is convicted at the ICTY for his role in the murder of more than 700 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 and sentenced to twenty-seven years imprisonment. Dordevic had been part of the initial focus of the investigation of the Bytyqi case regarding the chain of command within the Interior Ministry.

23 September 2011:Retrialof Popovic and Stojanovic begins before the Serbian War Crimes Chamber.

9 May 2012: Popovic and Stojanovic are acquitted in their retrial. The presiding judge reasons that because the Bytyqi Brothers were likely detained by MUP officials and killed after the end of the war, they did not have prisoner of war status and therefore could not have been victims of a war crime. He then emphasized that the Bytyqis were arrested while performing a humane act, helping two Roma families get from Kosovo to Serbia, where they wanted to seek refuge.

9 October 2012: The War Crimes Prosecutor files an appeal in the Popovic and Stojanovic retrials.

March 2013: The Appellate Court in Belgrade (War Crimes Department) upholds the judgment of the Belgrade Higher Court War Crimes Department and the acquittals of Popovic and Stojanovic. The Appellate Court agrees with the determination of the trial court that it was not proven that Agron, Mehmet and Ylli Bytyqi had prisoner of war status.

Recent Updates

25 April 2013: The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs questions U.S. State Department officials and calls upon them to seek justice in the case. The Committee confirms that they have met with surviving brother Fatose Bytyqi, that the U.S. State Department has engaged Serbia on a bilateral level regarding the case, and that Secretary Hillary Clinton has raised the case directly with Serbian Prime Minister and Interior Minister Dacic. Jonathan Moore, State Department Director of the Office of South Central Europe, states that: “We continue to call upon these authorities in Belgrade to investigate this case and to prosecute it…. We are not aware of direct progress.”

22 October 2013: U.S. Congressmen Tim Bishop introduces a concurrent resolution on the Bytyqi Brothers case. He is joined by ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel.

July 8, 2016: To mark the 17th anniversary of the Bytyqi murders, nearly 40 prominent human rights advocates, academics, and former U.S. officials penned an Open Letter to E.U. & U.S. leaders on Serbia’s failures in the Bytyqi case and war crimes processes, more generally.

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A compilation of primary resources used in constructing this Timeline can be found here.